A physician reveals how right-wing backlash policies have mortal outcomes — also for the white voters they promise to help

Named one of the most anticipated books of 2019 by Esquire as well as the Boston Globe

In the era of Donald Trump, many lesser- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, the guidelines that result actually place white Us citizens at ever-greater risk of sickness and death.

Physician Jonathan M. Metzl’s goal to understand the health implications of ‘backlash governance’ prospects him across America’s heartland. Interviewing a range of everyday Us citizens, he examines how racial resentment has fueled progun laws in Missouri, resistance to the Inexpensive Care Action in Tennessee, and slashes to colleges and social providers in Kansas. And he displays these procedures’ costs: increasing deaths by gun suicide, falling existence expectancies, and increasing dropout rates. Light Us citizens, Metzl argues, must reject the racial hierarchies that promise to aid them but in fact lead our country to demise.